Luis Trenker loves climbing the Dolemites in Italy, but when World War One breaks out, he returns home to Austria Hungary, where he is assigned to a mountain fort. Soon it becomes the scene of a battle, where his old friend, Albert Conti, is ordered by the Italian high command to take the fort.
It's one of those movies that was made in three versions, one in French, one in German and this English-language version, the only one known to survive. It has all the markings of a Mountain Movie, with lots of beautiful pictures of snow-covered mountains. It also shows it's joins clearly, with lots of wild shots between staged scenes, and a lot of looping in the dialogue for people to talk.
Viewed as a visual effect, it is quite lovely, with DP Charles Stumar making the bleak mountains lovely, and lithely moving the camera to maintain composition in the story scenes. However, the two parts of the movie seem disjoint, and never quite come together.
It's one of those movies that was made in three versions, one in French, one in German and this English-language version, the only one known to survive. It has all the markings of a Mountain Movie, with lots of beautiful pictures of snow-covered mountains. It also shows it's joins clearly, with lots of wild shots between staged scenes, and a lot of looping in the dialogue for people to talk.
Viewed as a visual effect, it is quite lovely, with DP Charles Stumar making the bleak mountains lovely, and lithely moving the camera to maintain composition in the story scenes. However, the two parts of the movie seem disjoint, and never quite come together.